Broken in Half
by flyintherightdirection
Summary: *Spoilers for Season 4 Episode 1* What it was like for Sarah after she left Dr Charles' office... Just a kind of deleted scene from Season 4 episode 1. One Shot.


_**A/N: I'm sorry in advance for this short one shot but I'm very emotional over Sarah's exit from the show. Why did barely any of the characters care? I thought they were meant to be a family?**_

 _ **This is kind a deleted scene of Sarah leaving.**_

 _ **Here's hoping she comes back.**_

* * *

Sarah closed the door of Dr Charles' office and kept going. She needed to leave.

Sarah continued walking down the corridor at pace, she couldn't let anyone see her break.

Everything was bad enough already without that.

Her chest hurt, her eyes burned and she didn't know how to keep her breathing steady.

Everything was a mess.

And she was doing what she did best; she was running away.

But she couldn't stay here.

And Baylor was a _good_ hospital and it didn't come with the complications of Med. It was a brand new start. She might actually have a chance to fit in somewhere.

Looking back, she had never really fit around here anyway. Just like she never fit in _anywhere._

But taking the offered position of her psychiatry residency had been a mistake. The other residents who had chosen it as their actual match option hadn't exactly welcomed _her_ with open arms and it felt like she had burned her bridges in the ED by not choosing Emergency Medicine.

After that Med had never felt like _home_.

And now everything with Dr Charles was too much.

She could have survived the isolation and her own self-doubts until she finished her residency but every time she looked at her mentor now…

She took a haggard breath to calm herself, finally reaching the elevator and pressing the button for the ground floor.

Haven given her staff security card back to Ms Goodwin, she had to take the public access way out of the hospital. And the closet way out was through the ED.

And needed to leave _now_. Or she might rethink everything and go back and ask for her job back and then have to look at him again. The thought made her sick.

She didn't know who to trust anymore.

The elevator was empty when she got in and she was grateful for small mercies. She just wished it would go quicker, she _needed_ to get out of here.

The elevator stopped on one of the middle floors, and in walked Will Halstead.

"Hey Reese, you coming to Connor's party tonight?" Will asked as he stepped into the empty elevator with her.

There was a party happening?

"…Eh…no…" She said.

"Got a better offer for the night huh?" Will smiled easily as if her entire world wasn't spiralling off its axis.

She went to answer honestly but what was the point?

She was leaving. Nobody knew and they wouldn't care.

She certainly knew that nobody would miss her, save for maybe Noah.

The very thought made her choke back a watery laugh because she wanted to be part of the ED family _so much_ and Noah was just an annoyance at the start.

Now he was the only one who seemed to remember who she was.

"What's the party for?" She asked, trying to fill the silence on the world's longest elevator ride.

"Oh you didn't hear?" Will asked. Sarah thought that would be pretty obvious, she had had to take a sabbatical for two months and didn't exactly keep up with the latest news in work, did anybody even notice she was gone?

She resigned to just shaking her head.

"The guy has gone had got some fancy offer from the Mayo Clinic."

"Oh."

"Yeah, there's some big bash for him down at the Hawaiian place, you know where Noah had his graduation party?"

She didn't like reminders of that night. Getting the call that Dr Charles had been shot….

"Sounds nice." She gritted out with a fake smile.

"Oh and when I can finally wrangle Nat into having our engagement party, you'll come along right?"

They were engaged? Since when?

 _You're just like your father_ , the treasonous voice in her head hissed. She didn't know the news in work, heck she didn't really know the people. She had no friends, she had isolated herself.

The only person she had trusted had wanted her father to die based on assumptions.

Sarah wondered just how she had gotten here. She felt more lost than her first day on her student rotation.

She just nodded dumbly, what else could she do?

The elevator stopped on the ground floor and her stomach dropped.

She tried to keep herself composed. She had done this before. She had left already.

She could do it again.

She just didn't know why it hurt so much, like she had someone crushing her heart in their hands.

She didn't have any reason to stay, so the logical option was to leave and start afresh, it was the best option for her. But she wasn't sure she wanted to.

"Watch it Reese." Ethan called as they pushed a trolley past her and she jumped out of the way, as if her ED rotation hadn't been two years ago and she was still used to the hustle and bustle.

The words got stuck in her throat. She felt like she should say goodbye, he had always been a solid anchor in the depths of the chaos but she had let him down last year and she didn't really think he had gotten over it, they hadn't spoken since she had been suspended.

"Catch you later Reese." Will called as he bee lined for the ED bay.

Her clothes felt like they were illuminous and screaming for people to look at her. She wasn't in her work clothes, someone had to notice.

Sarah bit her lip, feeling it like a stab of a knife to her heart.

Her rotation, though tough and gruelling, had been the first time in her life that she thought she might just fit in and now she didn't want to say goodbye.

Her head was starting to pound, feeling like she was being pulled in a hundred different directions. It was like she had lost her centre of gravity, like she was floating around, not knowing which way was up.

But she started walking anyway.

Maggie was too busy with a patient to notice her slipping through the familiar department. She kept her eyes straight ahead, she couldn't bear to catch anyone's eye.

Until she nearly ran right into someone.

"Reese. Hey." Connor Rhodes said as he placed a hand on her arm. Steadying her like he had on her very first day. "You doing okay?" He asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"…I will be." She answered simply, because things _had_ to get better.

He had had to do a consult after _everything_ with her father and his last code blue under Dr Charles inactive hands. So she knew he knew. About all of it.

Sometimes she didn't know who to hate the most, her father, Dr Charles or herself.

"Good." He nodded and with that he was gone.

And with that she had a clear path to the door.

She could do this. Just like she had two years before.

And this time she had a clear goal. To get her life back in order. To be a good doctor.

And for the second time, Dr Sarah Reese left the Gaffney Chicago Medical Centre without any plans for returning.


End file.
